By G. E. Shuman
Dear Readers,
This column is one of the few that I repeat from year to year.
It is a
distant memory, cold and old, dusted off now as a long-neglected, rediscovered
book might be. It matters, somehow, that
this nearly forgotten evening happened within a mid-nineteen-sixties year. Perhaps it could be that the late autumn wind
cooled and creaked the leafless, lifeless-looking trees even more then than
now; again… somehow. Or perhaps it is
only because those October thirty-firsts were spookier then, at least to the
one whose memory of the night it is. Those Halloweens contained no costumes of
bleeding skulls or vividly maimed souls. They were, simply, or perhaps, not so
simply, ghostly, hauntingly spooky nights.
On this one
Halloween, dusk, as dust, had settled slowly upon the small New England town of
the boy’s youth. Supper had been a
hurried affair, gobbled by giggling goblins anxious to get out into the night.
Low voices and footsteps of other spooks were already upon the front steps;
knocks and bone-chilling knob-rattling had already begun at the door.
The boy of
ten or so was more than ready to go out.
By accident or plan, his siblings had already slipped into the night
without him. He was very alone; at least
he hoped that he was alone, as he ventured into the much too chilly night
air. The cold breeze stung his eyes as
he peered through the rubbery-odored mask of his costume. He began the long walk through the
frozen-dead, musty-smelling leaves covering the sidewalk.
The youth
hurried past the frightful row of thick and dark, moonlit maples that lined the
way. He was very afraid that the dry
crunch of death in those old leaves would alert of his presence whatever ghoul
or ghost might be lurking behind one of those trees. As he walked on in the increasingly inky black,
he dared not peek even slightly around any of them. It was a sure thing that not EVERY roadside
tree hid some witch or ghastly ghoul, but the boy knew that he was certain to
pick the one which did, if he were to dare to look.
By sheer
will, or by chance, the youth succeeded in passing by the haunted trees, and
successfully trick-or-treated at many houses on the street. Every inch of the way he thought about the
one house he dreaded visiting most: the house of the witchy-looking old
lady. Sure, she seemed kind in the daytime,
but you didn’t see her humped old back or the wrinkly look in her eyes in the
daytime. Her house was cold as a tomb,
at least, such was her old porch, at night, in late October. The boy knew this well from the year before,
but that year he had been with his brothers and sisters. As he walked, the
scuffing, leaf-scraping sound of every step seemed to taunt him with the words:
Every… witch… awaits… the child… who walks… alone… Every… witch… awaits… the
child… who walks… alone…
The boy’s
small hands were nearly freezing by the time he reached the old lady’s small dark
house far down the street. He managed to
climb to the top of the worn and creaky steps.
He stood there a moment, and then worked up enough courage to open the
narrow door of the witch’s small, windowed porch. The rusty door spring, worn to its own
insanity by countless other small boys who were fools enough to enter here, screeched
a hateful, taunting announcement of the boy’s arrival. This it repeated, mocking its original
scream, as the door slammed tightly shut between the lad and the world outside.
The long,
enclosed tomb of a porch offered no relief from the cold, but some little
relief from the night wind. The only
light therein was that of a maddening, perfectly placed jack-o-lantern which
hideously smiled up at the boy from the floor, at the farthest corner of the
room. The porch exuded the sooty-sweet smell of that candle-lit carved pumpkin.
This strange aroma mingled with that of
crisp, cold Macintosh apples which filled a wooden crate at one wall. “What could possibly be the use of apples to a
witch?” The boy briefly pondered.
The one who
disguised herself as a regular, kind old lady during the daytime was very
cunning indeed. Her trap for little boys
was a porch table full of the biggest and best treats in the town. Those very famous treats were the single
reason the boy was even on this terrifying porch. There was a tray which held beautiful,
candied apples and another laden with huge, wax-paper-wrapped popcorn
balls. A bowl between them overflowed
with candy corn, the boy’s favorite.
Thoughts of poison apples and boiling cauldrons momentarily filled the
child. He then nervously picked his treat
and got it safely into the candy-stuffed pillowcase he carried. Hearing the nighttime witch walking across
her kitchen floor toward the door to the porch, he headed out, past the
screeching door, down the creaking steps, and toward home. If she had ever invited any little boy into
her home, that boy certainly had never come back out, he thought, as he briskly
walked. This boy, that night, had,
somehow, survived another visit to that house.
He had even gotten away with the biggest, most delicious popcorn ball of
all! His only fear then was in once
again getting past the street-side ghouls that certainly stared at him from behind
those huge old maples.
It is a
fact that Halloween was different in the nineteen sixties, before the age of
sugar and plastic holidays. There was just something hauntingly powerful about
the cheap paper cutouts, cheesy cardboard skeletons and black and orange
streamers of those years. Fold-out paper
pumpkins and eerie (and probably dangerous) cardboard candleholders lit the yards.
Homemade, totally safe treats filled pillowcases and paper bags of those who
dared to face the night. Those were night-prowling, costumed, youthful
vagabonds, young souls whose parents had no fear at all that they would not
return home safely.
Halloween
nights were ones of simple, frightful fun, in those years. Cartoon ghosts and
goblins, fake witches and funny Frankenstein monsters were all that stalked the
streets or the innocent imaginations of children then. True evil had nothing to do with those nights
at all.
The ghouls
of Halloweens long-past may live on only as aging, dusty memories, but the dark
and distant nineteen-sixties Halloween you just read about really did happen. At least, that’s how this old
trick-or-treater remembers it.
(Note: The author invites you to view his novels, “A Corner Café”
and the second edition of “The Smoke and Mirrors Effect” at Amazon.com. Both
books are available on Kindle and in paperback.)
